The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it. But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.[4]

ActiveDEMAND is a flexible marketing platform for digital marketing agencies and marketers. ActiveDEMAND packages range from the full-featured call tracking application for the small business marketer to the powerful Marketing Agency Portal designed for digital marketing agencies with multi-client management needs. Engage and track prospects using the integrated, comprehensive call tracking module, do more with built-in email templates, landing pages and social media. Convert leads and prospects into customers using automated marketing to manage nurture campaigns, auto-replies and more. Retain customers and grow your repeat businesses with powerful newsletters, special promotions and more.

The multichannel view offered by ActiveCampaign gets glimpses of a small business’s website while looking at users’ email and mobile devices. Its campaign builder helps entrepreneurs design marketing collateral, and the platform consolidates customer data so these insights can impact the email, SMS, and CRM options ActiveCampaign offers. This data also allows business owners to create segments.

I really like that the autoresponder can be configured to very specific times. I also like that it cannot respond to other autoresponder messages because it means therefore that the process would repeat over and over perpetually. Also, the fact that it cannot send messages multiple times to the same email is important otherwise it would be very annoying to the other party.

Office Autopilot plans all start at above $200 a month. These are the top 10 autoresponder and email marketing tools on the market today. You have options all the way from free to several hundred dollars a month, from basic functionality to complex analytics and shopping cart integration. The one you pick depends entirely on where your business is and what it needs.

Thinking and acting in a customer-centric way and not falling in the trap of automating for the sake of it. Marketing automation is not a holy grail. The business goals and the customer are what it’s all about. Without a customer-centric culture, supported by management, marketing automation often results in sheer auomation with little added value.

Been a while so I thought you might want to update this popular list. These tools you mention are great and Ive used many of them and will now try the rest. 🙂 When its time to update this list and article Id suggest you consider these newer tools: Email Personalisation = Altaire.com/Tech – Email Data = Competitor.Email & Edatasource.com – GDPR RePermission = Decco-Engine.com – Rich Email Content = Polymerse.com. Thanks again for a great list!

Infusionsoft has found that its automation platform saves users about 28 hours per month when it’s integrated with users’ other systems. That platform automates lead capture and follow-ups based on user activity and collects data about customers to enable personalization. Its analytics reports shine a light on what’s working, what’s not, and what the current ROI is for any campaign.

As far as I’m concerned, Hubspot doesn’t offer enough to justify its enterprise price tag. While Pardot isn’t much cheaper at this level, it does have the added benefit of integrating directly into Salesforce and Marketing Cloud – while I’ve never been a fan of these tools myself, they do tend to be popular in larger businesses, giving Pardot an edge here.
Wishpond is an application specializing in boosting online marketing campaigns. Offering features for marketing automation, social posting, website popups, lead management, API access, and custom CSS, it also supports a number of CRM integrations. Wishpond offers three monthly payment plans: Basic, Pro, and Growth costing $45, $78, and $129 respectively. For yearly payments, they offer 36% off your subscription.
Sales is all about speed. How long does it take you to respond to a customer? Was your conversation efficient while still being educational? Most importantly, did you get there before the other guy? Choosing a CRM to match the lighting speed of your sales team can bog you down in lots of calls and meetings. So we did the research for you to find the top 20 most user-friendly CRM software products. Stop shopping and start selling!
My first thought was how easy Ontraport was to get started with compared to another marketing automation company I had just tried. Recurring payments were to set up. There was no initial training cost, and you could sign up as a customer directly from their website. On top of this, everything was split testable without needing a strange workaround.
Constant Contacts is an email marketing service, created to strengthen email marketing practices of small businesses, associations, nonprofits organizations, etc. It offers WYSIWYG editor to create an email campaign, secure contacts list management, social stats reporting tools, images/texts import feature, real-time tracking of your email campaign, etc.
"Ok I have been wanting an Autoresponder for years ok and I have had a few they were free but they came nowhere close to what Listwire does every Newbie out here needs this period! When your starting out cash poor and in between blessings (LOL) You need all the breaks you can get well for what listwire can do, it's like getting a car for free but not just any car one with all the bells and whistles. Once I started seeing all Listwire can do "OMG" I started crying because I knew I'd arrived."
The attention for and growth of the marketing automation market is driven by several evolutions in the ways people inform themselves and buy. The shift from selling to buying, along with the advent of several new digital channels, used by consumers and B2B buyers, keeps impacting the marketing automation industry and the adoption of marketing automation by organizations. However, the best is yet to come.
Salesfusion is dedicated to helping companies build a large revenue funnel for marketing and sales by creating customized digital conversations that are seamlessly transitioned between departments. Marketing and sales teams participate in and measure these digital conversations to deliver more lead-to-revenue results by communicating with the right leads at the right time with the right message.
There are a number of reasons a person may not have acted after the first email. Perhaps they still weren’t convinced to make the purchase. Or maybe they didn’t even open the email at all. People get busy. It could be that they just needed one extra nudge. Hopefully, those regretting not taking advantage of the sale yesterday are inspired to do so today.
Marketing Automation platforms allow marketers to automate and simplify client communication by managing complex omni-channel marketing strategies from a single tool. Marketing Automation assist greatly in areas like Lead Generation, Segmentation, Lead nurturing and lead scoring, Relationship marketing, Cross-sell and upsell, Retention, Marketing ROI measurement.
Thanks Marcus for the comparisons, but I am somewhat confused by this post. It says 2018 in title, but yet comments are from 2014-17. I’m assuming it was originally written earlier and you’ve updated. I’d be curious what edits were made; how your opinions may have changed; who are the new top contenders for 2018. With all the growth in the marketing automation space in past 3 years, it couldn’t be simply updating the title. Also curious if a company is already tied to Salesforce for CRM does that necessarily lift Marketing Cloud as the premier choice?
Best Practices Calls to Action Coding Content Marketing Copywriting Customer Journey Customer Spotlight Data-Driven Marketing Deliverability Digital Marketing Email Automation Email Design Email Development Email List Email Marketing Email Templates Event Marketing Marketing Automation Metrics Personalization Segmentation Social Media Strategy Subject Line Testing Transactional Email
Rob, you don’t say who ‘booted’ you from using it. A significant GDPR factor is non-profits having to consent/re-consent those on established email lists and experiencing significant proportions of lists being lost because people miss the notifications or are too busy to fill in yet more forms. However, I have found a few using a ‘one-touch’ re-subscription button that takes immediate effect, without the recipient having to do anything else. It would appear that the re-subscription rate is higher, the easier it is to activate. On enquiry, I was told that they were using mail chimp for this.
Promotional emails are one of the most economical ways for any business to connect with customers. Research shows a message is five times more likely to be seen through email than on social media like Facebook or Twitter. That’s why musicians use email marketing software to share their performance schedule with their fans, non-profits use it to get donations and photographers use it to promote their portrait services. It just works.
Lead Liaison is a cloud-based sales and marketing automation solution that helps businesses accelerate sales by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales support with solutions such as a hot-lead dashboard, Buy Signals and a live ticker alert of businesses on the customer’s website. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for small to mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison offers clients the highest value per dollar of any industry provider. Additionally, Lead Liaison provides content creation services leveraged for communication vehicles such as press releases, blog posts, emails, and posts on social media platforms. Founded in 2013, Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas, and employs 19 people. For more information, visit www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

“Mailchimp was great when I just had a blog. Now that I have my book, I’m starting to have products, it’s more of a business. I didn’t think that Mailchimp could handle me. I needed something a little more versatile that could target the people that I sent things to depending on what list they were on or what they clicked. It needed to be a little more sophisticated for me. That’s why I needed to switch over.”

About the Author: Barry Feldman operates Feldman Creative and provides clients content marketing strategies that rock and creative that rolls. Barry has recently been named a Top 40 Digital Strategist by Online Marketing Institute and one of 25 Social Media Marketing Experts You Need to Know by LinkedIn. Visit Feldman Creative and his blog, The Point.
MailChimp is another popular email marketing service in the industry. It allows you to create and send email newsletters to your customers, manage subscriber lists, track campaign performance and much more. It also offers responsive email templates that look great on mobile devices and different screens. MailChimp automatically takes care of your sign-ups, un-subscribes, and bounce-back cleaning.
All in one Sales Execution and Marketing Automation Platform. Map your entire business process in hours not months. Designed to help you sell faster. With LeadSquared’s Marketing Automation tool you can:  Push your leads down the conversion path by sending the right message at the right time using automation.  Run high-performing email marketing campaigns with dozens of ready-to-use email templates to choose from.  Follow every movement of your lead with website tracking and prioritize them based on lead score and lead quality.  Create responsive landing pages in no time with numerous templates to choose from.  Organize and segment your leads on various factors to run targeted email and drip campaigns.  Integrate seamlessly with apps you love. Key LeadSquared Solutions are: 1) Lead Nurturing: Make your leads travel faster down the sales tunnel by using: a) Autoresponders: Ensure that the leads are greeted with relevant emails and SMS’ as they arrive. b) Drip Marketing: Send your prospects exactly what they need and when they need it. c) Email Marketing: Build and send beautiful emails that perform great on all devices. d) Lead and Website Tracking: Track all your lead activities and nurture them based on their actions on your website. e) List Segmentation: Segment leads based on their profiles and interests to nurture them accordingly. f) Content Library: Store your nurturing emails as templates to reuse them easily. 2) Lead Management System: Map your entire lead management process from capture till conversion with LeadSquared’s feature rich and hassle-free lead management system which include: a) Lead Capture Automation: You can ensure that no leads slip through the cracks and seamlessly capture leads from all your sources. (PPC, Social Media, Website, phone and more.) b) Email Integration: Sync your email inbox with LeadSquared to capture all prospect conversations. c) Lead Qualification: Use lead quality and activity scoring to identify and chase the best leads first. d) Lead Distribution: Assign leads to relevant sales people automatically, based on any rules you set. e) Tasks and Reminders: Automatically set tasks for your sales people based on lead actions. f) Source Tracking: Identify the lead generation sources working best for you. 3) Sales Management: It includes everything you need to manage your inside and field sales teams. a) Sales Tracking: Track everything - your salespeople, their performance and revenue. b) Sales Alert: Notify salespeople whenever their leads take an important action. c) Sales Automation: Leave repetitive yet important tasks to sales automation. 4) Marketing Analytics: Use our analytics to run data-driven campaigns and get better at marketing every single day. a) Drip Analytics: Get performance reports for each step of your drip marketing campaigns. b) Email Analytics: Analyze and improve each aspect of your email marketing campaign. c) Landing page: Get conversion analytics for each landing page and web form. d) Lead Funnel: Find where the leads are at each step of your marketing funnel. e) List Engagement: Find how engaged a list is by looking at its engagement index.
MailChimp is another popular email marketing service in the industry. It allows you to create and send email newsletters to your customers, manage subscriber lists, track campaign performance and much more. It also offers responsive email templates that look great on mobile devices and different screens. MailChimp automatically takes care of your sign-ups, un-subscribes, and bounce-back cleaning.
I have to say I’m so insanely jaded by autoresponders since I’ve been in the web marketing business that I snub the thought of using them personally…but isn’t that the temptation we can so easily fall into…especially since we forget that most people are UNDER exposed to them and see them for the fresh content, authority-inducing mechanism they are.
Here are some of the most interesting email marketing stats around. The Radicati Group says we’ll send and receive around 281 billion emails this year. According to Adestra, 78% of teens use email. Statista reports that 85% of US adults use email. Consumers like getting emails from the brands they love. But email senders have to respect the inbox. Email too often, or include the wrong content, and Litmus says some people will report your email as spam instead of unsubscribing.

1. Pricing – While SendinBlue is one of the most affordable email marketing tools currently available, you’ll need to be on their $49/month plan or above to access unlimited automation workflows. While not a major issue, this tends to rule out SendinBlue for me when recommending a marketing automation tool to a small business that’s new to automation. After all, ActiveCampaign starts at $9!

Email marketing is a simple and proven strategy to promote your business. It attracts new customers and helps maintain close relationships with loyal customers. There's a long list of email marketing services available today and most operate at relatively low prices, with packages to fit every business size and need. It's just a matter of determining which features and tools you need and how much you're willing to spend.

Proactive Lead Generation. When it comes to digital marketing, you must not only create eye-catching ads and other promotional materials; you must also create quality content to highlight your business’ presence on the internet. With TechValidate, you can collect data directly from your clients, collage the information, and publish the content on your site or on social media, boosting the chances of lead generation.
In a post at the MailChimp blog, Goat Milk Stuff cofounder PJ Jonas said that while she and her husband Jim (and their eight children, who also help run the company) diligently collected emails during trade shows, they wanted to expand without compromising their business’ approachable, family-friendly values. Surprisingly, email marketing allowed them to do both.
And that leads us right into understanding service pricing and packaging. The email marketing services we reviewed range from about $5 per month to as much as $20 per month for a range of features. Many email marketing plans include unlimited email sends each month and bill you based on the number of subscribers. If you have a small list, then look for a company that offers a free plan, a low-cost plan for several hundred subscribers, or even a pay-as-you-go plan. On the flip side, many of these services also offer high-volume plans with up to 100,000 or more contacts. Sometimes this requires a custom plan that has to be arranged directly with a sales rep. If you're willing to commit, then look for the companies that offer discounts if you pay yearly rather than monthly. A few offer also money-back guarantees.

The multichannel view offered by ActiveCampaign gets glimpses of a small business’s website while looking at users’ email and mobile devices. Its campaign builder helps entrepreneurs design marketing collateral, and the platform consolidates customer data so these insights can impact the email, SMS, and CRM options ActiveCampaign offers. This data also allows business owners to create segments.
Before doing a comparative analysis of the advantages and disadvantages and the pros and cons, or the pricing comparisons, it’s important to know what to look out for. It is common to come across complaints about automation tools being incompatible with CRM and performance issues reported one month down the line. That can be painful. Companies that do not carry out a detailed research and miss out the fine print can end up burning their fingers by the sliding scale pricing structures and unexpected additional costs.
MailChimp is another popular email marketing service in the industry. It allows you to create and send email newsletters to your customers, manage subscriber lists, track campaign performance and much more. It also offers responsive email templates that look great on mobile devices and different screens. MailChimp automatically takes care of your sign-ups, un-subscribes, and bounce-back cleaning.
MailChimp 12,000 emails per month (daily limit of 2,000), for up to 2,000 subscribers. MailChimp’s autoresponder range is comprehensive. It includes basic autoresponders (welcome, date-based, RSS etc), as well as more advanced options (e.g. ecommerce, tag-based). The main drawback – their autoresponder editor isn’t the easiest to use. (Full review)
Furthermore, the industry evolution towards more integrations and connections between marketing automation software, CRM, social listening platforms, etc. enables organizations to focus on what really matters: their channel-agnostic – prospective – customer and their business goals. This is seen in the consolidation in the marketing automation software market and in the evolutions of the solutions that are mainly about more features to connect customers and different parts of the business while connecting departments (marketing, sales,…) and processes as well.
Why not resurrect old posts? You can bet your readers, especially new subscribers, haven’t read everything you’ve published. Consider scouring your blog for posts that remain valuable. You might batch together several that cover a single category to make it easy to create a topical and thematic series. Or, you might have written a series of posts in the past that could be ideal for an autoresponder series.
Personalisation in email marketing is essential because most people want a more relevant experience. Email personalisation is not just about using people’s names in an email. It’s also about making sure you send the right emails to the right people at the right time. One essential tool for email personalisation is segmentation. You can get an email marketing expert to help you set up segments so you can personalize appropriately. Done right, email personalisation results in more clicks and more business.

Quality Emailing Tool. Sending emails to the right people at the right time may be one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of digital marketing. Fortunately, ActiveCampaign has an email management tool that allows you to create personalized and strategically scheduled emails. Additionally, it can support live ecommerce data and videos to create more engaging content for your clients and leads.